Merits & Flaws

Merits and Flaws represent an interesting way to introduce unique traits and difficulties to a character not reflected by the regular Abilities, Charms, and Backgrounds of a character. While in most cases things can be better represented with those mechanics and roleplaying, merits and flaws allow backstory to have a real and consistent impact on the dice being rolled.

Merits and Flaws, are, however, a weak link in the already tissue-paper-thin chain that is the mechanics of Exalted, and on paper they can seem to give a player a chance to get 'free points' for minimal costs or invest less character-creation resources to get better capabilities. Exalted 2e copy-pasted a lot of old World of Darkness stuff into their system without checking too much mechanically, but one thing they forgot to paste was the most important: Flaws are bad. By its very nature a Flaw must cost a character more than they gain from it, and it is Storyteller responsibility to make sure this occurs... if someone takes a long time to heal in a low-combat game, their physical weakness will be subject of social twittering. If someone owes an Obligation it will never be simple to resolve. Ultimately a Flaw should never be taken because it is a good idea mechanically, but because it is a bad-idea-mechanically that is worth it because its a good idea thematically or leads to more interesting roleplaying.

There is an argument to be made that bad mechanical choices aren't necessarily good roleplaying choices, but given the nature of Flaws as imposed conditions rather than driven by character choices, Stormwind Fallacy isn't really applicable here.